


saveur

by foolish_mortal



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, F/F, Incubus Will Graham, Kink Meme, M/M, Supernatural Elements, Urban Fantasy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-10-05
Updated: 2014-10-05
Packaged: 2018-02-20 01:05:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,339
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2409455
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foolish_mortal/pseuds/foolish_mortal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Will is an incubus that feeds off the emotions of killers at crime scenes to keep from preying on humans, and it's killing him. Hannibal Lecter decides to help out in more ways than Will expects.</p>
            </blockquote>





	saveur

**Author's Note:**

> Kink meme prompt: Will is an incubus that is deteriorating due to his refusal to take a life.
> 
> Drop me a line on my tumblr at [deftmegalodon](http://www.deftmegalodon.tumblr.com).
> 
> Note: there was already a Hannibal fic called "savor", so I changed the title to "saveur."

The man had been killed in the alley behind a night club in downtown Richmond. The sound of Will's shoes in the empty dance hall echoed of stale sexual energy from the late hours of yesterday night. The club was a beloved relic in the heart of the city, not quite up to code and comfortable, full of dark nooks to get away when it had once served seedier clientele.

The establishment would have been a prime stalking ground for others of Will's kind. It was the kind of place Will himself might have hunted, had he not exiled himself long ago into becoming a parasite instead of a predator—a scavenger picking over the carcasses of human emotions. A necessary metamorphosis.

Will's shoes struck a second echo, weaker this time, and he managed a few tepid disappointing sips before following Jack outside.

The alley smelled like piss and beer and blood. Price said the man was in his mid-twenties, worked as a bartender at a local dive, and showed the early effects of a cocaine addiction. He didn't look like much of anything now. Will knelt down beside the corpse and could barely discern his face through the blood and ravaged tissue. The skin on his arms and legs had been hacked away with a small sharp implement, the mutilation spontaneous and raw with anger. Human emotions, not supernatural.

A sour note of disquiet rang in the back of Will's throat. "It's not the Ripper," he said.

Jack Crawford's shoes stepped into Will's periphery. "Are you sure?"

"There's no artistry in this display. It wasn't planned." Will felt his lip curl back in contempt. "He wasn't stalked before he was killed, he was attacked because he was convenient. The motive doesn't fit the execution."

Jack was obviously unsatisfied by the answer. "That's speculation, Will. We still don't know why the Ripper kills."

"I know." Will stood and surveyed the corpse's ugly positioning and uneven wound patterns. Everything about the scene was wrong. "But I know this isn't him."

Jack sighed with heavy gusto and let him off the hook. "Okay, what do you see?"

Jack Crawford for all his blind spots had always stood cheek by jowl with Will as they both stared into the abyss. The abyss had never stared back at Jack. Will closed his eyes and let the rank fumbling anger and jealousy settle into him, a brief and unfulfilling sustenance.

 

A lunchbox rattled into Will's field of view and then the scalloped vee of a burgundy wrap dress. "Anybody sitting here?" Alana asked cheerfully and made a show of looking around the empty lunch table as she unpacked her organic yoghurt and cold pasta.

Will and Alana Bloom had maintained a standing lunch invitation for a year and a half now. Alana was one of the most brilliant forensic psychiatrists in her field. It was Will's personal opinion that she was wasted in teaching and policing Jack and the occasional dog sitting favors in Wolf Trap. She could have filled Will's consulting role with tenacious competence in his absence, something that needled him every time he contemplated quitting.

Will pushed a small pastry box from Alana's favorite bakery across the table. "Thanks for covering my classes. Jack had me out in Richmond."

"Oh?" Alana's lips curved up as she opened the box and surveyed the neat rows of mille feuille. She shared a piece and offered him the silence of chewing to mull over his next words.

Alana didn't push Will to talk about cases, but she was there with a patient ear and advice if he wanted. Will enjoyed unpacking his work with a colleague who didn’t pressure him. He found himself discussing the man in the alley.

"It's not the Ripper," Will added when he'd finished, a tired well-worn mantra. Every profiler, policeman, and psychiatrist in the tidewater region wanted the flash and glamour of a celebrity killer.

"The only person that cares if it's the Ripper is Jack," Alana said wryly. "I just want us to catch whoever did this."

"We could really use you out in the field," Will said. He was careful to erase tones of perceived paternalism from his voice. Alana didn't need a benefactor. "I could talk to Jack. We could be a great team if we put our heads together."

Alana's smile receded to a small forgiving pucker. "I don't think that's a good idea, Will."

"Oh." Will's voice matched the careful retreat in her expression. "Sorry, I didn't mean to imply you're not needed here."

He was offering her an excuse for her refusal. She decided to take it. "I don't want you to feel you're alone out there, but I know you're more comfortable working by yourself."

"Sure," Will replied tonelessly. "Yeah, of course."

He and Alana were friendly—not too friendly, she made sure of that. It was hard to think of her as a confidante when she still avoided being alone in rooms with him, a bewildering pointed affectation that she attributed for his benefit, but Will couldn’t begrudge Alana her staged social kabuki, not when he moved continuously within the circles of his own.

Will was a creature of persuasion—the intoxicating promise of pleasure, the primal allure of the forbidden—something his personal effects had the cumulative effect of mitigating with the liberal application of cheap cologne, a closet full of ugly plaid shirts, and an uneven beard that disguised half of his face.

Alana was safe; virtuous, incorruptible, keenly intelligent. If Jack was bedrock, then she was iron fired into steel. Intellectually, Will knew he should want her. She had circled around him before when they were newly acquainted, and even now he caught her staring at him sometimes in still contemplation, her body tense with an unfinished action. Will found himself straining to know where and how her blow would fall.

Sometimes he thought maybe, maybe if he reached across the table and took her hand, she would let herself surrender to her nascent impulses. But Will couldn't be sure if her emotions were fostered by his influence or from a genuine attraction towards him. Likewise, he didn't know if he was drawn to her from his own emotions or his body's instinct to feed. He would never know.

"How is Margot?" Will asked instead and was winded by the blowback of affection and guilty arousal that suffused Alana's emotions at the mention of her girlfriend.

"Good. We're really good." Alana bit into her sandwich. "Her brother is having a dinner this Friday. I'm invited."

"Meeting the family already?" Will joked, but it came out resentful. He wished they were friendly enough that he could tease her and she could laugh it off. He had never heard her laugh.

Alana gave him a half-shrug. Her dark mane of hair slid off her shoulder. "I met him already once, briefly. He gave me the creeps."

"Is that your professional opinion?" Will asked.

"I'm not allowed to have professional opinions about my girlfriend's brother." Alana's smile was bitter and humorless. "Can't let my work follow me home. I have to draw the line somewhere."

Will rolled the words around in his mouth before answering. "I um, admire your ability to separate your personal and professional life."

Alana's eyes crinkled with concern. "Do you find it difficult, Will?"

Will thought of the pile of sweaty night shirts in his laundry hamper and the volumes of Tedeschi on his bookshelf. "You know the answer to that." As if on cue, the phone in his pocket twittered out a familiar ringtone. Will pushed away his lunch and stood. "And apparently so does Jack. Excuse me."

The smoker's oasis in the courtyard razed the air with the smell of stale cigarettes. Jack didn't spare him any niceties when Will put the phone to his ear. "The Shrike's taken a new victim. You're on the next flight to Saint Paul."

Pinpoints of color shuttled ant-like before Will's eyes, each point laid carefully after the other like train tracks. "We just got back from Duluth. It's too soon, Jack."

"It is what it is, Will. We need you." Jack's voice sounded odd. "Stop by my office; there's someone I want you to meet."

 

Jack's new pet psychiatrist was an insipid dandy of a man who couldn’t decide whether to flirt with Will or psychoanalyze him. Hannibal Lecter was like so many of his predecessors, a personality deficient in a pretty package. Will pretended to sleep through their flight into Minnesota and watched through slitted eyes as Hannibal leafed through psychiatric journals and ordered glasses of imported sparkling water.

The knock on Will's hotel room door the next morning was at a more respectable hour than Will had anticipated but no less tasteless.

"Good morning, Will. May I come in?" Hannibal asked with ironic civility, so sure of his welcome, and Will only let him in because he was curious what Hannibal would do.

The homemade breakfast was a clumsy ploy to get into Will's good graces—Will didn't miss Hannibal's glance towards Will's unmade hotel bed, undoubtedly imagining what the two of them could be doing in it—but Will could appreciate the spoils if not the intent of a courtship parameterized in cups of expensive coffee and protein scramble.

The eggs were still warm and creamy, their texture cut with spiced smoked sausage and delicate cilantro. "You're not the first psychiatrist Jack's sicced on me," Will warned through a mouthful of scramble. "Who recommended you? Heimlich up at Harvard?"

Hannibal unscrewed the thermos and poured them both a measured half cup. "An acquaintance of yours, I believe—Alana Bloom."

Will was taken aback. Alana didn't seem the siccing type, but she and Jack often brought out the worst in each other. "You know her?"

"I mentored her during her residency at Johns Hopkins. Her girlfriend's brother was my former patient."

Hannibal's mouth closed around a spear of sausage. Will couldn't help watch his thin lips as he chewed. "Former?"

"Mason had issues that we were able to work through together." Hannibal looked pleased and pensive. "He is a success story, one that is unfortunately too rare."

"Keeps you in business," Will retorted. "People and their problems. All those ugly human variables."

"Some bad math with this Hobbs fellow," Hannibal observed as if he knew that Will had been triangulating all the possible incident points of their feet and knees underneath the table. "Ever have any problems, Will?"

Hannibal was building a rapport. Will had used similar tactics during interrogations when he had been a detective in the New Orleans precinct. "I know what kind of crazy I am," he deflected. "Is that a kind of sanity? Abnormal expectations normalizing grotesque outcomes?"

Hannibal tilted his fork. "In my experience, there is very little distinction between the grotesque and the extraordinary."

"Which one am I?"

The distaste and dismissal in Hannibal's voice was surprising. "It's obvious how Uncle Jack sees you, a fragile fine teacup reserved for special guests."

Special guests, Will thought and smothered a laugh. Sinners, killers, beasts. We're all mad here. "Grotesque but useful," he concluded. Maybe Alana had prescribed Hannibal as a watch dog for him after all and not a bloodhound for Jack. "And how do you see me?"

When Hannibal smiled and ducked his head, the sunlight caught the flare of his eyelashes against his lids. "Finish your breakfast, Will."

Will absently brought the empty fork to his lips. Hannibal, for all his faults, was very handsome and very tempting in the chiaroscuro of his cheap hotel room, and Will had to remind himself that it was only the forward momentum of early morning that made him malleable. When Hannibal finally made an overture, Will rebuffed him easily with a dig about their professional relationship and only regretted it a little.

It was nothing personal, Will thought as he pulled on his gun holster and laced up his shoes while Hannibal waited downstairs in the car. Will rarely found anyone interesting.

 

In the end, all it took was a single phone call, a lone overlooked quantifier.

Will fired once, then twice, again, felt each slug as keenly as if they were next to his skin. Hobbs relented at each one, and the recoil of a disused gun was a warm living thing in Will's hands.

This. This was desire and exhilaration in its purest form. There was so much passion in this house, so much love and so much blood beating out of soft earnest hearts. Garrett Jacob Hobbs was dying, and Will had never felt so alive. It felt like family. It felt like a feed, and the long forgotten thrill blunted the edge of Will's hunger.

Abigail Hobbs was on the floor bleeding out from a mangled carotid artery. Mortal, guilty, but to Will, entirely beautiful. He was proud of her, his girl. Will dropped the gun to lift his shaking hands to her neck and knew that he could make it all go away.

Abigail's face was white, her eyes blown wide. Will's fingers skidded and clawed against her skin, unable to sustain a life so soon after taking one. He couldn't bear to lose her.

Hannibal appeared in front of him infinite like an empyreal angel. His broad capable hands gently peeled Will's away and applied pressure to the wound. His face was fierce, softly vigilant. Between them, they were Abigail's father, her executioner, her savior. She was theirs, and they would help her survive them.

Later, Will sat outside covered in a murderer's blood and watched the EMTs lift Abigail Hobbs into the ambulance. Hannibal had shrunk again into a mild-mannered man in an absurdly expensive toffee jacket as he clambered into the car. The cuff underneath was ruby red with the shared communion of Abigail's blood.

Hannibal felt Will's eyes, turned to meet them, and Will felt himself flushing at the absence of accusation he saw there.

("See?" Garrett Jacob Hobbs hissed at him. "See?")

**Author's Note:**

> Chapter one references:  
>  __  
> * “I'm not sand. I am bedrock.” Hannibal, Buffet Froid  
>  * "Mant and Nuorteva in the Tedeschi are better on insects.” Red Dragon, Chapter 14  
> * “Most psychology departments are filled with personality deficients.” Hannibal, Aperitif  
> * “I was curious what you would do.” Hannibal, Releves  
> * “You have Heimlich at Harvard and Bloom at Georgetown.” Hannibal, Aperitif  
> * “The mathematics of human behavior...All those ugly variables. Some bad math with this Shrike fellow.” Hannibal, Aperitif  
> * “You know Will, I think Uncle Jack sees you as a fragile little teacup.” Hannibal, Aperitif  
> * "He viewed his own mentality as grotesque but useful, like a chair made of antlers." Red Dragon, chapter 2  
> * “We’re all mad here.” Alice in Wonderland, chapter 6  
> * “Mortal, guilty, but to me, the entirely beautiful” Lullaby by W.H. Auden  
> * “He can't stand the thought of losing her.” Hannibal, Aperitif  
> * “He was gonna make it all go away.” Hannibal, Potage  
> * “You don't really know if you're going to survive him, do you?” Hannibal, Mizumono  
> 


End file.
